Review: London Tonight documents London graffiti, focusing on pieces painted on the London Underground System. It's pure...... more

Review: London Tonight documents London graffiti, focusing on pieces painted on the London Underground System. It's pure vandalism for a solid hour. It's hard to compare it to any other films out there as it truly sits in a class of it's own. Think the destruction of the Dirty Hands series mixed with the insight of a documentary like Kings & Toys. London writers have always been fiercely proud of our capitals scene and London writers have never given a care to graf from anywhere else but this fire has never before been immortalised on film, like it is in London Tonight. The film starts with old school bomber Check describing the early eighties graf scene and the formation of the vandal squad. London legends like Met, Slice and Faum talk about the famous writers bench at Covent Garden and the Chrome Angels. More and more writers recount yard stories and reminisce on the work of infamous heads. This is punctuated by police interview tapes; the officer getting more and more frustrated. We see dope pieces by Fusion, Mace, DTB, Steas and DDS all running. Sick amounts of bombing from Sham, Ment and countless others. There's footage of insides, scratches and yard missions and it's all exclusive. The Christmas section documents a famous take over that most London writers will remember and some funny clips from the London news reports of the time. It ends with a tribute to 3 writers no longer with us. A touching piece on Ozone and some really funny footage of Wants - the "runner bean" line had me cracking up. I like the way this section was handled, no doom and gloom like Kings & Toys but just a straight up tribute. London Tonight is a reminder that the system is always going to get smashed. And to the writers who continue to smash it you have my respect. I recommend London Tonight to anyone who appreciates London graf, whether you're in it or not. Graffiti Life Company http://www.visionfilmsuk.com/films/Documentaries/index.html

... less

With examples drawn from media coverage of the war on terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the London underground bombings,...... more

With examples drawn from media coverage of the war on terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the London underground bombings, this book explores the changing relationship between journalism and power, in a globalized news culture. It is useful for those interested in the globalized news culture of the twenty-first century.

... less

It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified...... more

It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified strangers in underground shelters, and later broadcasts stories about survivors in rubble-strewn streets. But for her listeners, the war is far from home. Listening to Frankie are Iris James, a Cape Cod postmistress, and Emma Fitch, a doctor's wife. Iris hears the winds stirring and knows that soon the letters she delivers will bear messages of hope or tragedy. Emma is desperate for news of London, where her husband is working - she counts the days until his return. But one night in London the fates of all three women entwine when Frankie finds a letter - a letter she vows to deliver.

... less

Tax scams involving the rich and famous make eye-catching news copy. They also are part of a significant and growing economic problem - the "shadow...... more

Tax scams involving the rich and famous make eye-catching news copy. They also are part of a significant and growing economic problem - the "shadow economy" that defrauds the government. Frank Cowell is one of the worlds leading contributors to the theoretical economic analysis of tax evasion. In this book he systematically studies the underground economy to examine how certain types of economic analysis can be applied to tax evaders. He also recommends measures that can be taken to counteract the problem.Cowell's investigation raises questions that go to the heart of public economics and reveals the shortcomings of applying standard economic models of crime to tax evasion. He develops an analytical framework that shows how the underground economy grows and suggests simple economic mechanisms that will induce the behavior that leads to tax evasion.Having laid the analytical groundwork, Cowell turns to policy. He observes that standard welfare-based arguments against cheating are "decidedly flaccid" and points toward an enforcement policy that is informed by economic analysis, particularly in terms of scope and practicality.Frank A. Cowell is Reader in Economics at the London School of Economics and the author of Measuring Inequality and Microeconomic Principles.

... less

With examples drawn from media coverage of the war on terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the London underground bombings,...... more

With examples drawn from media coverage of the war on terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the London underground bombings, this book explores the changing relationship between journalism and power, in a globalized news culture. It is useful for those interested in the globalized news culture of the twenty-first century.

... less

Despite the extraordinary advances in digital and communication technology over recent years, we know very little about the way these complex systems affect...... more

Despite the extraordinary advances in digital and communication technology over recent years, we know very little about the way these complex systems affect everyday work and interaction. This book, published in 2000, seeks to explore these issues through a series of video-based field studies. It begins by discussing the introduction of basic information systems in general medical practice and ends with an exploration of interpersonal communication in advanced media spaces; in the process also looking at news production, the control room of London Underground and computer aided design in architectural practice. Social interaction forms a particular focus of these studies as they explore the way individuals use various tools and technologies and coordinate their actions and activities with each other. The authors also show how video-based field studies of work and interaction can inform the design, development and deployment of new technology, in this valuable new resource for academics, researchers and practitioners.

... less

It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified...... more

It is 1940, and bombs fall nightly on London. In the thick of the chaos is young American radio reporter Frankie Bard. She huddles close to terrified strangers in underground shelters, and later broadcasts stories about survivors in rubble-strewn streets. But for her listeners, the war is far from home. Listening to Frankie are Iris James, a Cape Cod postmistress, and Emma Fitch, a doctor's wife. Iris hears the winds stirring and knows that soon the letters she delivers will bear messages of hope or tragedy. Emma is desperate for news of London, where her husband is working - she counts the days until his return. But one night in London the fates of all three women entwine when Frankie finds a letter - a letter she vows to deliver.

... less

Despite the extraordinary advances in digital and communication technology over recent years, we know very little about the way these complex systems affect...... more

Despite the extraordinary advances in digital and communication technology over recent years, we know very little about the way these complex systems affect everyday work and interaction. This book, published in 2000, seeks to explore these issues through a series of video-based field studies. It begins by discussing the introduction of basic information systems in general medical practice and ends with an exploration of interpersonal communication in advanced media spaces; in the process also looking at news production, the control room of London Underground and computer aided design in architectural practice. Social interaction forms a particular focus of these studies as they explore the way individuals use various tools and technologies and coordinate their actions and activities with each other. The authors also show how video-based field studies of work and interaction can inform the design, development and deployment of new technology, in this valuable new resource for academics, researchers and practitioners.

... less

Tax scams involving the rich and famous make eye-catching news copy. They also are part of a significant and growing economic problem - the "shadow...... more

Tax scams involving the rich and famous make eye-catching news copy. They also are part of a significant and growing economic problem - the "shadow economy" that defrauds the government. Frank Cowell is one of the worlds leading contributors to the theoretical economic analysis of tax evasion. In this book he systematically studies the underground economy to examine how certain types of economic analysis can be applied to tax evaders. He also recommends measures that can be taken to counteract the problem.Cowell's investigation raises questions that go to the heart of public economics and reveals the shortcomings of applying standard economic models of crime to tax evasion. He develops an analytical framework that shows how the underground economy grows and suggests simple economic mechanisms that will induce the behavior that leads to tax evasion.Having laid the analytical groundwork, Cowell turns to policy. He observes that standard welfare-based arguments against cheating are "decidedly flaccid" and points toward an enforcement policy that is informed by economic analysis, particularly in terms of scope and practicality.Frank A. Cowell is Reader in Economics at the London School of Economics and the author of Measuring Inequality and Microeconomic Principles.

... less

Australia released, Blu-Ray/Region A/B/C DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s),...... more

Australia released, Blu-Ray/Region A/B/C DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Short Film, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: It's been three or four years since the end of WWIII, which in and of itself only lasted 2 minutes 28 seconds. The war included a nuclear bomb dropped on London, which turned the city into a wasteland. Most of the few surviving Londoners, who live among what little concrete remains and who may be affected physically and/or mentally by the nuclear fallout, try to live life like nothing extraordinary has happened to them or the world. They include: a BBC commentator who reports the news from each broken down television one at a time; Mrs. Ethel Shroake, a civilian who is next in line for the throne (hence the current lyrics for 'God Save Mrs. Ethel Shroake'); and Lord Fortnum of Alamein, who believes that he is turning into a bed sitting room for which he will have a very strict occupancy policy. The Frerdin family live solely underground on a still functioning subway train on the Circle Line. The Frerdin daughter, Penelope, is seventeen months pregnant, the unborn baby's father being a young man named Allan who lives on one of the commuter lines. Allan and the Frerdins decide they have no choice but to venture above ground to find any health care practitioner to deal with Penelope's pregnancy. Above ground, they don't know what the future holds for them. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Berlin International Film Festival, ...The Bed Sitting Room (1969) (Blu-Ray)

... less

A Q&A with Helen SmithQuestion: The clever title of your book is a direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. How has that book and...... more

A Q&A with Helen SmithQuestion: The clever title of your book is a direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. How has that book and its genre of smart, literary "nonsense" influenced your writing? Helen Smith: I adored Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was a child. I loved the clever wordplay, the absurd situations, and the strange characters--not all of them sympathetic. I have to warn Lewis Carroll fans that any direct reference to his work in my book begins and ends with the pun in the title, but I have no doubt that I have been influenced by everything I have ever read, including his books. I was lucky that I read a prodigious amount when I was younger. For anyone who is thinking about writing a book, reading is the best way to learn how to do it.Q:Alison Wonderland has been praised for its unique cast of characters. Are you particularly fond of any one character, and what was your inspiration for him or her?HS: I like all the characters, even the baddies, but Alison is the one I'm most fond of. She likes to think she has the measure of everyone else, but she doesn't have much insight about her own situation. She's flawed but funny--a grumpier version of me.Q: The idea of genetically altered food is a little scary and has been in the news a lot. What drew you to use that concept as a backdrop for the plot?HS: Most of my characters are on a mission of some kind. I'm impressed by people who are drawn to a cause, so I was very interested when I read about young people protesting about genetically modified vegetables. Many of us care deeply about the treatment of people and animals, but of all the things to get exercised about, a vegetable is not the first that most would think of. There's a very good argument that genetically modified crops, if they can be bred to be more resistant to disease, will help people in the developing world fight famine. But it's also true that we take the advances of science and use them too lightly, without considering the consequences. I love the passion and commitment of young eco-warriors who care enough to call those in authority to account.Q: Taron greatly influences Alison's actions and brings out her more adventurous side. Is there anyone in your life whom you have adventures with?HS: I traveled all over the world with my daughter when she was small, and I have been fortunate to have some very good friends who have got up to all sorts of mischief with me over the years--but there has been no one quite like Taron. If there's anyone out there like her, I wouldn't mind an introduction.Q: You are very well traveled, but you set the novel in London and Weymouth. What made you choose those locations?HS: I live in London and I love it. I wanted the city to feature almost as a character in the book, and I was keen to introduce some landmarks that readers might not be familiar with, like the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park and the eccentric little alleyways in Brixton, where the doorway to Mrs. Fitzgerald's detective agency is located. I spent my teenage years near Weymouth and my parents still live there, so I wanted to use some of those locations: the Cerne Abbas Giant, for example, and the Weymouth pier--though, sadly, that has now been pulled down.Q: Alison seems to be anti-marriage. How do you think she would have responded to the royal wedding craze in her hometown of London?HS: I think she'd probably have responded much as I did: pretended to have no interest at all, then got caught up in the pageantry and enjoyed the occasion. It was a lovely sunny day here, and almost everyone had the day off. There were street parties and house parties, and the celebrations were incredibly good-natured. Alison can be a bit curmudgeonly, but even she would have found it difficult to resist the charms of the day.Q: Alison's interaction with the baby, Phoebe, seems to affect her deeply. How has being a single mother impacted your writing?HS: A line in the book, "I never realized before that taking care of someone makes you love them more than when they take care of you," describes my experience of being a parent. I had my daughter when I was very young, and it was the strangest and still the best thing that has ever happened to me. The insights and wisdom that I gained--and my sense of wonder at having a child who just turned up in my life but was never anything less than wanted and fiercely loved--permeate my writing.Q: Is there anything else about the book you think an American reader should know? Are there really tunnels under the Thames?HS: I've been working with a theater producer to find the perfect setting for a play I'm writing, and we have investigated underground venues. There are World War II bomb shelters that have been turned into archive storage facilities, abandoned tube stations, foot passages and railway tunnels still in use under the Thames, and a Royal Mail network crisscrossing under London that was recently decommissioned. But I don't think any of them are used the way the tunnels are used in the book. I hope not, anyway!

... less

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National...... more

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Many of them were portraits of people in Soho in the 1950s: artists, writers, actors, musicians. Soho is an area of London that is famous for many things, but I hadn't known that, for a short time after the Second World War, it had been the center of an artistic movement. The bohemian, underground world that thrived there so briefly and was captured so vividly by Deakin fascinated me. I began to conceive a story about a girl, Lexie, who arrives there from a very conventional home and makes a life for herself as a journalist.Q: There are two stories in the novel, aren't there?A: The other story is set in the present and is about Elina, a young Finnish painter who has just had her first child. With Elina, I was interested in writing about new motherhood, those very first few weeks with a newborn--the shock and the rawness and the emotion and the exhaustion of it. It's something that's been done a great deal in nonfiction, but I haven't read much about it in fiction. Much of the novel is concerned with people whose lives change in an instant; a decision or a chance meeting or a journey occurs and suddenly your life veers off on a new course. Having your first child is one of those times. As soon as the newborn takes its first breath, life as you've known it is gone and a new existence begins.Q: Why did you decide to divide the novel into two time frames?A: I liked the idea of these two women living in the same city, fifty years apart. Lexie and Elina have no inkling of each other's existence, but they hear each other's echoes through time. And, as it turns out, they are linked in other ways--in ways neither of them could ever have expected.Q: As well as motherhood and the unexpectedness of life, there's a great deal about love in the book as well, isnt there?A: Love in many forms powers the book: familial, platonic, and also romantic. Lexie has many different men in her life. There's Felix, the feckless yet famous TV news reporter, and Robert, the rather more serious biographer. But the great love of her life is Innes Kent, the man she follows to London, who takes her under his wing and gives her her first job as a journalist.Elina's relationship with her boyfriend Ted is challenged by the arrival of their baby. Ted begins to recall things from his own infancy, and these things dont seem to fit. I was interested in the way having children makes you remember and reassess your own childhood, in micro-detail: things I'd never thought about or remembered before would suddenly rear their head. And this made me wonder what it would be like if the memories that resurfaced were of places and people you didn't recognize, if your own life suddenly seemed strange to you.Q: Did you have to do a lot of research for the book?A: The 1950s and 1960s are not that distant in time, and the sixties in particular are very well documented in art, film, photography, and literature. I read history books but also made sure to submerge myself in novels of the period. You get wonderful insights into the way people spoke then; it was quite different from the way English is spoken in London now. The cadences and vocabulary have completely changed. So I read Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys, Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster. Novels also give you tiny details you didn't even know you needed--how a telephone worked in a house of bed-sitters, for example. Where one bought peacock-blue stockings in 1957.You have to be careful with research, though. There's a terrible temptation, once you've done all this collecting of interesting details, to shoehorn in as much of it as you can. You can sometimes find yourself writing a sentence along the lines of "She picked up the telephone, which was made of Bakelite, a substance first developed in 1907 by a Belgian chemist..." At which point you have to stop and try to forget everything you know about early plastic manufacture. Most research you have to throw out. But you still need to do it, to give yourself confidence and scaffolding.Q: London as a city has a strong presence in the book. Was this deliberate?A: I felt all the way through as if London were the third main character in the novel, along with Lexie and Elina. Most of the novel was written while I was living away from London, so I suppose I was re-creating a city with which I have had a very long relationship (a rather off-and-on one, to be honest).Q: To what degree does your own life play into your fiction?A: I don't write autobiographically. Fiction for me is an escape, an alternative existence, so I wouldn't want to re-create my life on the page. There are elements of my life that filter into my books, but they are usually recast and redrawn and reimagined to such a degree as to be unrecognizable to me or anyone else. Lexie and Elina both arrive in London as adults, as I did, and Lexie becomes a journalist, as I did. The scenes about motherhood I couldn't, of course, have written without having been a mother myself. The rest is made up.Recommended Reading from Maggie O'FarrellThe Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark: My favorite Spark, I think. A portrait of a women's boarding house in postwar London, including the spinsters, the young dormitory girls, the elocution teacher, the mercenary but beautiful Selina and the Schiaparelli dress they all take turns to wear. The Severed Head by Iris Murdoch: A devastating account of love and marriage in 1950s London. Murdoch handles her six characters with poise as their lives become ever more entangled. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns: The book I have given most as a present. It's the mesmerizingly lively story of a young artist who marries against the wishes of her family and her ensuing struggle with poverty, motherhood and her awful, self-centered husband. I make it sound gloomy but it's anything but   Dear George and Other Stories by Helen Simpson: I particularly love the story "Heavy Weather" in this collection, which documents a couple on holiday with a toddler and a baby. Nobody but Simpson can write with such heartbreaking accuracy about life with small children. The Hours by Michael Cunningham: I read and re-read this book while writing The Hand that First Held Mine. It is, quite simply, perfect. How did he do it? Any Human Heart by William Boyd: The whole of the 20th century is laid out in the diaries of Logan Mountstuart. A spectacular, astonishing novel. (Photo © Ben Gold)

... less

Chris Petit's novel Robinson triumphs as a portrayal of a life spiralling out of control and of the bleak anonymity of the city of London. His narrator,...... more

Chris Petit's novel Robinson triumphs as a portrayal of a life spiralling out of control and of the bleak anonymity of the city of London. His narrator, bored and indifferent to domesticity and the dead rituals of office life, meets the enigmatic Robinson and falls under his curious charm. It is interesting, though not essential to the enjoyment of the novel, to know a little of the history of Robinson the literary character. He seems to first turn up in 1932 in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's masterpiece, Journey to the End of the Night. He then goes underground for a while before emerging over a decade later in the strange and electrifying poems of Weldon Kees. Another disappearance, along with Kees's own, a gap of a further 30 years or so, and Robinson emerges in the poetry of Simon Armitage. Petit has used the slowly emerging Robinson mythos to good advantage, adding and building on it, creating a novel that h as much in common with the tone of Céline and the Kees poems; here also is a novel that journeys through the night. Robinson is beguiling, mysterious, strangely familiar, charming, deceitful, dangerous, tragic and wilful. Petit's narrator slowly allows himself to be sucked into Robinson's seedy world, permitting Robinson's will to manipulate his own. He becomes a willing sidekick to Robinson's increasingly dangerous and depraved enterprises. Petit intended the novel to be set in the near future and certain parts of the later stages of the novel read like Briti sh news summaries from the autumn of 2000. It is a credit to Petit's keen eye for all that is monstrous and messy in British society that this is so. It is also slightly worrying, for one is left with the nasty feeling that some of the other dark events he has imagined might also lurk up and intrude on our daily lives. --Iain Robinson

... less

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National...... more

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Many of them were portraits of people in Soho in the 1950s: artists, writers, actors, musicians. Soho is an area of London that is famous for many things, but I hadn't known that, for a short time after the Second World War, it had been the center of an artistic movement. The bohemian, underground world that thrived there so briefly and was captured so vividly by Deakin fascinated me. I began to conceive a story about a girl, Lexie, who arrives there from a very conventional home and makes a life for herself as a journalist.Q: There are two stories in the novel, aren't there?A: The other story is set in the present and is about Elina, a young Finnish painter who has just had her first child. With Elina, I was interested in writing about new motherhood, those very first few weeks with a newborn--the shock and the rawness and the emotion and the exhaustion of it. It's something that's been done a great deal in nonfiction, but I haven't read much about it in fiction. Much of the novel is concerned with people whose lives change in an instant; a decision or a chance meeting or a journey occurs and suddenly your life veers off on a new course. Having your first child is one of those times. As soon as the newborn takes its first breath, life as you've known it is gone and a new existence begins.Q: Why did you decide to divide the novel into two time frames?A: I liked the idea of these two women living in the same city, fifty years apart. Lexie and Elina have no inkling of each other's existence, but they hear each other's echoes through time. And, as it turns out, they are linked in other ways--in ways neither of them could ever have expected.Q: As well as motherhood and the unexpectedness of life, there's a great deal about love in the book as well, isnt there?A: Love in many forms powers the book: familial, platonic, and also romantic. Lexie has many different men in her life. There's Felix, the feckless yet famous TV news reporter, and Robert, the rather more serious biographer. But the great love of her life is Innes Kent, the man she follows to London, who takes her under his wing and gives her her first job as a journalist.Elina's relationship with her boyfriend Ted is challenged by the arrival of their baby. Ted begins to recall things from his own infancy, and these things dont seem to fit. I was interested in the way having children makes you remember and reassess your own childhood, in micro-detail: things I'd never thought about or remembered before would suddenly rear their head. And this made me wonder what it would be like if the memories that resurfaced were of places and people you didn't recognize, if your own life suddenly seemed strange to you.Q: Did you have to do a lot of research for the book?A: The 1950s and 1960s are not that distant in time, and the sixties in particular are very well documented in art, film, photography, and literature. I read history books but also made sure to submerge myself in novels of the period. You get wonderful insights into the way people spoke then; it was quite different from the way English is spoken in London now. The cadences and vocabulary have completely changed. So I read Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys, Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster. Novels also give you tiny details you didn't even know you needed--how a telephone worked in a house of bed-sitters, for example. Where one bought peacock-blue stockings in 1957.You have to be careful with research, though. There's a terrible temptation, once you've done all this collecting of interesting details, to shoehorn in as much of it as you can. You can sometimes find yourself writing a sentence along the lines of "She picked up the telephone, which was made of Bakelite, a substance first developed in 1907 by a Belgian chemist..." At which point you have to stop and try to forget everything you know about early plastic manufacture. Most research you have to throw out. But you still need to do it, to give yourself confidence and scaffolding.Q: London as a city has a strong presence in the book. Was this deliberate?A: I felt all the way through as if London were the third main character in the novel, along with Lexie and Elina. Most of the novel was written while I was living away from London, so I suppose I was re-creating a city with which I have had a very long relationship (a rather off-and-on one, to be honest).Q: To what degree does your own life play into your fiction?A: I don't write autobiographically. Fiction for me is an escape, an alternative existence, so I wouldn't want to re-create my life on the page. There are elements of my life that filter into my books, but they are usually recast and redrawn and reimagined to such a degree as to be unrecognizable to me or anyone else. Lexie and Elina both arrive in London as adults, as I did, and Lexie becomes a journalist, as I did. The scenes about motherhood I couldn't, of course, have written without having been a mother myself. The rest is made up.Recommended Reading from Maggie O'FarrellThe Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark: My favorite Spark, I think. A portrait of a women's boarding house in postwar London, including the spinsters, the young dormitory girls, the elocution teacher, the mercenary but beautiful Selina and the Schiaparelli dress they all take turns to wear. The Severed Head by Iris Murdoch: A devastating account of love and marriage in 1950s London. Murdoch handles her six characters with poise as their lives become ever more entangled. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns: The book I have given most as a present. It's the mesmerizingly lively story of a young artist who marries against the wishes of her family and her ensuing struggle with poverty, motherhood and her awful, self-centered husband. I make it sound gloomy but it's anything but   Dear George and Other Stories by Helen Simpson: I particularly love the story "Heavy Weather" in this collection, which documents a couple on holiday with a toddler and a baby. Nobody but Simpson can write with such heartbreaking accuracy about life with small children. The Hours by Michael Cunningham: I read and re-read this book while writing The Hand that First Held Mine. It is, quite simply, perfect. How did he do it? Any Human Heart by William Boyd: The whole of the 20th century is laid out in the diaries of Logan Mountstuart. A spectacular, astonishing novel. (Photo © Ben Gold)

... less

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National...... more

A Q&A with Maggie O'FarrellQ: What made you want to write this book?A: A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of John Deakin's photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Many of them were portraits of people in Soho in the 1950s: artists, writers, actors, musicians. Soho is an area of London that is famous for many things, but I hadn't known that, for a short time after the Second World War, it had been the center of an artistic movement. The bohemian, underground world that thrived there so briefly and was captured so vividly by Deakin fascinated me. I began to conceive a story about a girl, Lexie, who arrives there from a very conventional home and makes a life for herself as a journalist.Q: There are two stories in the novel, aren't there?A: The other story is set in the present and is about Elina, a young Finnish painter who has just had her first child. With Elina, I was interested in writing about new motherhood, those very first few weeks with a newborn--the shock and the rawness and the emotion and the exhaustion of it. It's something that's been done a great deal in nonfiction, but I haven't read much about it in fiction. Much of the novel is concerned with people whose lives change in an instant; a decision or a chance meeting or a journey occurs and suddenly your life veers off on a new course. Having your first child is one of those times. As soon as the newborn takes its first breath, life as you've known it is gone and a new existence begins.Q: Why did you decide to divide the novel into two time frames?A: I liked the idea of these two women living in the same city, fifty years apart. Lexie and Elina have no inkling of each other's existence, but they hear each other's echoes through time. And, as it turns out, they are linked in other ways--in ways neither of them could ever have expected.Q: As well as motherhood and the unexpectedness of life, there's a great deal about love in the book as well, isnt there?A: Love in many forms powers the book: familial, platonic, and also romantic. Lexie has many different men in her life. There's Felix, the feckless yet famous TV news reporter, and Robert, the rather more serious biographer. But the great love of her life is Innes Kent, the man she follows to London, who takes her under his wing and gives her her first job as a journalist.Elina's relationship with her boyfriend Ted is challenged by the arrival of their baby. Ted begins to recall things from his own infancy, and these things dont seem to fit. I was interested in the way having children makes you remember and reassess your own childhood, in micro-detail: things I'd never thought about or remembered before would suddenly rear their head. And this made me wonder what it would be like if the memories that resurfaced were of places and people you didn't recognize, if your own life suddenly seemed strange to you.Q: Did you have to do a lot of research for the book?A: The 1950s and 1960s are not that distant in time, and the sixties in particular are very well documented in art, film, photography, and literature. I read history books but also made sure to submerge myself in novels of the period. You get wonderful insights into the way people spoke then; it was quite different from the way English is spoken in London now. The cadences and vocabulary have completely changed. So I read Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Jean Rhys, Margaret Drabble, Margaret Forster. Novels also give you tiny details you didn't even know you needed--how a telephone worked in a house of bed-sitters, for example. Where one bought peacock-blue stockings in 1957.You have to be careful with research, though. There's a terrible temptation, once you've done all this collecting of interesting details, to shoehorn in as much of it as you can. You can sometimes find yourself writing a sentence along the lines of "She picked up the telephone, which was made of Bakelite, a substance first developed in 1907 by a Belgian chemist..." At which point you have to stop and try to forget everything you know about early plastic manufacture. Most research you have to throw out. But you still need to do it, to give yourself confidence and scaffolding.Q: London as a city has a strong presence in the book. Was this deliberate?A: I felt all the way through as if London were the third main character in the novel, along with Lexie and Elina. Most of the novel was written while I was living away from London, so I suppose I was re-creating a city with which I have had a very long relationship (a rather off-and-on one, to be honest).Q: To what degree does your own life play into your fiction?A: I don't write autobiographically. Fiction for me is an escape, an alternative existence, so I wouldn't want to re-create my life on the page. There are elements of my life that filter into my books, but they are usually recast and redrawn and reimagined to such a degree as to be unrecognizable to me or anyone else. Lexie and Elina both arrive in London as adults, as I did, and Lexie becomes a journalist, as I did. The scenes about motherhood I couldn't, of course, have written without having been a mother myself. The rest is made up.Recommended Reading from Maggie O'FarrellThe Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark: My favorite Spark, I think. A portrait of a women's boarding house in postwar London, including the spinsters, the young dormitory girls, the elocution teacher, the mercenary but beautiful Selina and the Schiaparelli dress they all take turns to wear. The Severed Head by Iris Murdoch: A devastating account of love and marriage in 1950s London. Murdoch handles her six characters with poise as their lives become ever more entangled. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns: The book I have given most as a present. It's the mesmerizingly lively story of a young artist who marries against the wishes of her family and her ensuing struggle with poverty, motherhood and her awful, self-centered husband. I make it sound gloomy but it's anything but   Dear George and Other Stories by Helen Simpson: I particularly love the story "Heavy Weather" in this collection, which documents a couple on holiday with a toddler and a baby. Nobody but Simpson can write with such heartbreaking accuracy about life with small children. The Hours by Michael Cunningham: I read and re-read this book while writing The Hand that First Held Mine. It is, quite simply, perfect. How did he do it? Any Human Heart by William Boyd: The whole of the 20th century is laid out in the diaries of Logan Mountstuart. A spectacular, astonishing novel. (Photo © Ben Gold)

... less

A Q&A with Helen SmithQuestion: The clever title of your book is a direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. How has that book and...... more

A Q&A with Helen SmithQuestion: The clever title of your book is a direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. How has that book and its genre of smart, literary "nonsense" influenced your writing? Helen Smith: I adored Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was a child. I loved the clever wordplay, the absurd situations, and the strange characters--not all of them sympathetic. I have to warn Lewis Carroll fans that any direct reference to his work in my book begins and ends with the pun in the title, but I have no doubt that I have been influenced by everything I have ever read, including his books. I was lucky that I read a prodigious amount when I was younger. For anyone who is thinking about writing a book, reading is the best way to learn how to do it.Q:Alison Wonderland has been praised for its unique cast of characters. Are you particularly fond of any one character, and what was your inspiration for him or her?HS: I like all the characters, even the baddies, but Alison is the one I'm most fond of. She likes to think she has the measure of everyone else, but she doesn't have much insight about her own situation. She's flawed but funny--a grumpier version of me.Q: The idea of genetically altered food is a little scary and has been in the news a lot. What drew you to use that concept as a backdrop for the plot?HS: Most of my characters are on a mission of some kind. I'm impressed by people who are drawn to a cause, so I was very interested when I read about young people protesting about genetically modified vegetables. Many of us care deeply about the treatment of people and animals, but of all the things to get exercised about, a vegetable is not the first that most would think of. There's a very good argument that genetically modified crops, if they can be bred to be more resistant to disease, will help people in the developing world fight famine. But it's also true that we take the advances of science and use them too lightly, without considering the consequences. I love the passion and commitment of young eco-warriors who care enough to call those in authority to account.Q: Taron greatly influences Alison's actions and brings out her more adventurous side. Is there anyone in your life whom you have adventures with?HS: I traveled all over the world with my daughter when she was small, and I have been fortunate to have some very good friends who have got up to all sorts of mischief with me over the years--but there has been no one quite like Taron. If there's anyone out there like her, I wouldn't mind an introduction.Q: You are very well traveled, but you set the novel in London and Weymouth. What made you choose those locations?HS: I live in London and I love it. I wanted the city to feature almost as a character in the book, and I was keen to introduce some landmarks that readers might not be familiar with, like the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park and the eccentric little alleyways in Brixton, where the doorway to Mrs. Fitzgerald's detective agency is located. I spent my teenage years near Weymouth and my parents still live there, so I wanted to use some of those locations: the Cerne Abbas Giant, for example, and the Weymouth pier--though, sadly, that has now been pulled down.Q: Alison seems to be anti-marriage. How do you think she would have responded to the royal wedding craze in her hometown of London?HS: I think she'd probably have responded much as I did: pretended to have no interest at all, then got caught up in the pageantry and enjoyed the occasion. It was a lovely sunny day here, and almost everyone had the day off. There were street parties and house parties, and the celebrations were incredibly good-natured. Alison can be a bit curmudgeonly, but even she would have found it difficult to resist the charms of the day.Q: Alison's interaction with the baby, Phoebe, seems to affect her deeply. How has being a single mother impacted your writing?HS: A line in the book, "I never realized before that taking care of someone makes you love them more than when they take care of you," describes my experience of being a parent. I had my daughter when I was very young, and it was the strangest and still the best thing that has ever happened to me. The insights and wisdom that I gained--and my sense of wonder at having a child who just turned up in my life but was never anything less than wanted and fiercely loved--permeate my writing.Q: Is there anything else about the book you think an American reader should know? Are there really tunnels under the Thames?HS: I've been working with a theater producer to find the perfect setting for a play I'm writing, and we have investigated underground venues. There are World War II bomb shelters that have been turned into archive storage facilities, abandoned tube stations, foot passages and railway tunnels still in use under the Thames, and a Royal Mail network crisscrossing under London that was recently decommissioned. But I don't think any of them are used the way the tunnels are used in the book. I hope not, anyway!

... less